R3 Sunday "Hitting the High Notes" : Modern Jazz and Heroin

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Sun 26 March
6.45 Sunday Feature: Hitting the High Notes
The story of jazz in the postwar era is one of revolution and rebellion. But a big part of it was the mini-epidemic of heroin use that emerged among jazz musicians. Sally Marlow examines the relationship between heroin and jazz.

Interesting program.May not be any news to anyone here, light on the politics, but at least not sensationalised. Hal Galper and Benny Golson interviewed. And Elmo Hope got a mention, a "first" in a BBC documentary?!

BN.

Interesting follow up to compare with the British 50/60s scene. Very different socio economic/racial factors but with its fair share of addiction. Emulation or the "nature of the job"?

[Jazzrook]

Sun 26 March
6.45 Sunday Feature: Hitting the High Notes
The story of jazz in the postwar era is one of revolution and rebellion. But a big part of it was the mini-epidemic of heroin use that emerged among jazz musicians. Sally Marlow examines the relationship between heroin and jazz.

Interesting program.May not be any news to anyone here, light on the politics, but at least not sensationalised. Hal Galper and Benny Golson interviewed. And Elmo Hope got a mention, a "first" in a BBC documentary?!

BN.

Interesting follow up to compare with the British 50/60s scene. Very different socio economic/racial factors but with its fair share of addiction. Emulation or the "nature of the job"?

Brief musical clips from the Narcotic Farm:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04xwvpn

JR

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Brief musical clips from the Narcotic Farm:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04xwvpn

JR

Odd she didn't mention Synanon (and Jazz), the Santa Monica "institution" that Art Pepper, Joe Pass, Frank Rehak and a host of others passed through. It evolved into a kind of Moonie church and was eventually closed down over tax and "criminality".

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

Wondered how many were aware of this significant sounding box set of re-issues?

https://jazztimes.com/reviews/albums/various-artists-classic-savoy-bop-sessions-1945-49/

Many of these recordings are of "Classic" status but it is intriguing to see them all re-packaged in line with the record label that released them in first place. Some of the material is familiar but it is also intriguing to realise that artists like Sonny Rollins recorded quite so early on in their careers. It is difficult to not to approach this music without conjuring up images of zoot suits, musicians wearing shades and smoke-filled clubs and I suppose that the music on the box set probably encapsulates most people's perception of jazz. The names checked in the review is enough to get most jazz fans salivating and it is really hard to shake off the notion that jazz was never quite as "purest" as it was in the period covered by these discs. There is something about the whole Be-bop movement that is hard to resist but the timing and concept of this box set seems intriguing. This box set seems like a window in to a magical era.

I think the absence of Charlie Parker offers a fascinating perspective of this music. That said, this music may represent a moment when jazz was briefly uninhibited by commercial constraints yet I wonder what the relevance of Be-bop is to either musicians or the audience coming to jazz in 2017. The music was recorded around seventy years ago and there can be few people still around who witnessed this music first hand and not via the medium of recordings. It was only made about 30 years after the heyday of the ODJB - about 30% of the way in through the history of jazz so to speak. I think that Clint Eastwood's film about "Bird" must now be nearly 30 years old itself and whilst this prompted renewed interest in his music and the be-bop movement, in 2017 I would imagine that a release like this will be of little more interest to a young audience than King Oliver. Any pretense of this music being "modern" must now be completely shot and the historic importance of a lot of this music must have escaped the attention of younger people going to jazz gigs now. I don't if younger fans will find this music as intriguing as I do.

The other point that I wanted to raise was just how some of these hallowed names seem to have disappeared completely off the radar. I can't recall the last time I heard or read anything about Al Haig, a stalwart of many bebop sessions. Other musicians like Kai Winding and Shorty Rogers and Howard McGhee are hardly familiar names either and I would have to own up to being unaware that I have even heard anything by Brew Moore or Allen Eager - the last of whom ultimately only flirted with jazz (and drugs) before pursuing a career in motor racing. It was a fascinating and very intense period in jazz history and there is a fear that some of the lesser players like Moore and Eager are unlikely to sustain much interest in repertoire that is likely to consist of contrafacts and themes played in unison. The stuff with Navarro and Dameron is essential yet as much as I love this music, 10 CD's worth of Bop may be a bit exhausting.

[Quarky]

Sun 26 March
6.45 Sunday Feature: Hitting the High Notes


Interesting follow up to compare with the British 50/60s scene. Very different socio economic/racial factors but with its fair share of addiction. Emulation or the "nature of the job"?

Looking at this drug issue from a further distance, it is understandable to me that drugs were prevalent in the post-war period, 50s and 60s, when Jazz was hitting an absolute high spot, and there was a world of new music to win.

But what of the current day? Can it be compared with athletic sports, which are being cleaned up and drugs are taken for medicinal purposes only?.....

Found a recent article, which stated: “I would guess drug use in the jazz scene at present is no higher than in the population at large, and probably even a little lower,” Potter writes via e-mail. “The bebop-era stereotype of the junkie jazz musician has always been unfortunate, irrelevant and more than a little racist, so it’s irksome to see this anachronistic myth trotted out yet again.....

https://jazztimes.com/features/high-notes-jazz-and-drugs-in-the-21st-century/

It seems to me that Jazz these days is in a levelled-out phase, and drugs may not be necessary. Ground -breaking solos which point to a new musical direction may not be required.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Looking at this drug issue from a further distance, it is understandable to me that drugs were prevalent in the post-war period, 50s and 60s, when Jazz was hitting an absolute high spot, and there was a world of new music to win.

But what of the current day? Can it be compared with athletic sports, which are being cleaned up and drugs are taken for medicinal purposes only?.....

Found a recent article, which stated: “I would guess drug use in the jazz scene at present is no higher than in the population at large, and probably even a little lower,” Potter writes via e-mail. “The bebop-era stereotype of the junkie jazz musician has always been unfortunate, irrelevant and more than a little racist, so it’s irksome to see this anachronistic myth trotted out yet again.....

https://jazztimes.com/features/high-notes-jazz-and-drugs-in-the-21st-century/

It seems to me that Jazz these days is in a levelled-out phase, and drugs may not be necessary. Ground -breaking solos which point to a new musical direction may not be required.

Well, I suspect drug use is related to peer group and the lived experience of current players, less permanently "on the scene", socially, habitat, and professionally, has something to do with it. But it's there and can come as a surprise, Kenny Kirkland being one " shouldn't happen" casualty. I recently found a hugely highly respected player (deceased but not that long ago) had been a user for decades. So, it can be kept discrete and individuals can pretty much function normally. Not every addict is Chet Baker.

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

Of course there is still drug use in jazz and not just obscure names. Herbie Hancock was quite candid about this in his autobiography that came out a couple of years ago. In fact, I think the media were more interested in this aspect of the book than about the music. Anyway, it is not as if there was an effect on the music. I would guess that the social use of drugs is pretty common in all elements of the music industry and have heard accounts of people smoking things after local gigs which have been both jazz and Classical ones. As you say, some of the names I have heard mentioned are not necessarily ones you might expect or indeed fit the "bebop" model.

I don't necessarily agree with surprises either. Most of the recent casualties through drug addiction have not exactly been under the carpet. Kirkland's issues were well known at the time and the same can be said about the guitarist Hiram Bullock who used to play with Gil Evans. The advent of the internet also makes a pretty difficult for drug use to be kept secret and if you type in a search for a particularly famous trumpet player who has emerged in the last 20-odd years, a lot of the stories will relate to drug issues which have been reported in the American media or first hand accounts of people who have witnessed things at gigs as is the case with the daughter of a friend of mine. If you attend gigs, then I suppose this story will already be quite familiar, even if you might have wondered why there has been a paucity of recent album releases.

I think there is no doubt that Parker's habit made drug use fashionable as other players envisaged it assisting their own performance but there was also an issue of the criminal underworld making drugs cheaper and more readily available after World War Two. Anti-drug smuggling measures are far more sophisticated these days and therefore I doubt if they are a freely available as in the late 1940s.

[Rcartes]

The other point that I wanted to raise was just how some of these hallowed names seem to have disappeared completely off the radar. I can't recall the last time I heard or read anything about Al Haig, a stalwart of many bebop sessions. Other musicians like Kai Winding and Shorty Rogers and Howard McGhee are hardly familiar names either and I would have to own up to being unaware that I have even heard anything by Brew Moore or Allen Eager - the last of whom ultimately only flirted with jazz (and drugs) before pursuing a career in motor racing. It was a fascinating and very intense period in jazz history and there is a fear that some of the lesser players like Moore and Eager are unlikely to sustain much interest in repertoire that is likely to consist of contrafacts and themes played in unison. The stuff with Navarro and Dameron is essential yet as much as I love this music, 10 CD's worth of Bop may be a bit exhausting.

It's sad that many of these fine musicians have fallen out of public view: Brew Moore and Allen Eager were both terrific tenor players. Brew Moore cut only a few sides in the late 1940s, and not a lot later on: there's a full discography at http://www.jazzdisco.org/brew-moore/discography/#490520. One of my favourite LPs was a collection of recordings by musicians influenced by Lester Young, including Moore: Lestorian Mode, and the LP is still available on Amazon even: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lestorian-M...lestorian+mode (though I remember the cover as having been more abstract and blue in colour: I must try to dig out the album. You can get a sense of Brew's playing on the track Lestorian Mode itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvO8...NDrV9SI40uCEl7

Allen Eager made relatively few sides under his own name (http://www.jazzdisco.org/allen-eager/discography/) but lots with Tadd Dameron in the Royal Roost broadcasts as well as the Blue Note session with Wardell Gray under Tadd. He was a superbly swinging musician, wonderfully fluent. My favourite playing of his is on one side of the LP of the Saturday Night Swing Session broadcast that really did swing, with also with some fine Fats Navarro and maybe a bit too much Bill Harris and Charlie Ventura. To get an idea of his playing, try High on an Open Mike (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpEC1ian28); his solo (after Fats') is badly edited but swings like the proverbial.

There are so many other rather neglected musicians, like Bill Perkins and Bob Cooper, for example. And Shorty Rogers was once tremendously popular, making many sides with his Giants in the early/mid fifties. If you listened to the jazz programme on Radio Luxemburg you'll recognise the theme tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOii0Bfe12g. But my favourite track by the Giants was a very clever feature in which Bob Cooper and John Graas trade phrases of ever shorter length; it's wonderfully named Coop de Graas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uGb...Wl9Wt-vaSCYU-y.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

It's sad that many of these fine musicians have fallen out of public view: Brew Moore and Allen Eager were both terrific tenor players. Brew Moore cut only a few sides in the late 1940s, and not a lot later on: there's a full discography at http://www.jazzdisco.org/brew-moore/discography/#490520. One of my favourite LPs was a collection of recordings by musicians influenced by Lester Young, including Moore: Lestorian Mode, and the LP is still available on Amazon even: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lestorian-M...lestorian+mode (though I remember the cover as having been more abstract and blue in colour: I must try to dig out the album. You can get a sense of Brew's playing on the track Lestorian Mode itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvO8...NDrV9SI40uCEl7

Allen Eager made relatively few sides under his own name (http://www.jazzdisco.org/allen-eager/discography/) but lots with Tadd Dameron in the Royal Roost broadcasts as well as the Blue Note session with Wardell Gray under Tadd. He was a superbly swinging musician, wonderfully fluent. My favourite playing of his is on one side of the LP of the Saturday Night Swing Session broadcast that really did swing, with also with some fine Fats Navarro and maybe a bit too much Bill Harris and Charlie Ventura. To get an idea of his playing, try High on an Open Mike (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpEC1ian28); his solo (after Fats') is badly edited but swings like the proverbial.

There are so many other rather neglected musicians, like Bill Perkins and Bob Cooper, for example. And Shorty Rogers was once tremendously popular, making many sides with his Giants in the early/mid fifties. If you listened to the jazz programme on Radio Luxemburg you'll recognise the theme tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOii0Bfe12g. But my favourite track by the Giants was a very clever feature in which Bob Cooper and John Graas trade phrases of ever shorter length; it's wonderfully named Coop de Graas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uGb...Wl9Wt-vaSCYU-y.

Brew Moore was pretty popular in Denmark where he then lived, at least until Dexter's arrival "eclipsed" him. He didn't suffer fools gladly by all acounts, including "fool" / inattentive audiences ! An untimely end but a good player and I would have thought the Danish records hold up as representative of his later output? I always enjoyed them.

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

R Cartes

Interesting to read your response. I looked up both Allen Eager and Brew Moore up on Wickipedia at the time of my initial post and was surprised to learnt that, in both instances, they had careers in music which extended beyond the 1940s. I cannot recall hearing much by wither musician but seeing that their heyday was some 70 years ago, it is not surprising that they have completely fallen off the radar. There can be few fans still around who would have heard this music first hand and I don't think either is distinctive enough to have cemented a long-term reputation in jazz. In a way you allude to this yourself as you make reference to Wardell Gray who is himself a forgotten figure these days. However, I don't think this is limited to players like Moore and Eager. Shorty Roger's music is slightly different as I think his "giants" really made an impression of younger jazz fans in the early 1950's so there is a nostalgia element with his music. "Cool n' crazy" still sounds terrific even if some of Roger's recordings seem to sit oddly with the concept of "modern jazz" insofar that you can now appreciate just how influential Basie's original band was upon his work . (There is even a Basie tribute album by Rogers.) The whole "running the changes" aspect of Bop almost ensured that lesser players have gone by the wayside but I think your comments mask a far wider problem insofar that younger audiences have almost entirely rejected the "bop model" of playing jazz and rock / popular influences are probably far more prescient. Rea most liner notes and younger players are more likely to cite being influenced by popular culture than Charlie Parker whose music is probably little more relevant as in influence as Louis Armstrong. I would also have to add that there have been plenty more interesting musicians than Eager and Moore in the intervening years. The alarming thing for me is that players like David Murray who I used to consider as avant garde sound a bit old hat in comparison with the stuff which is more fashionable these days and less in the tradition than the kind of jazz I grew up listening to. I would still choose to listen to Murray every time if given a choice with artists like Neil Cowley, Snarky Puppy, etc who have grabbed recent media attention.

I did find some tracks on youtube to explore Moore and Eager's music before posting and I will listen further to your links. I really love this era of jazz but I do think that there is a strong risk of diminishing returns when you delve in to this area. The likes of Gillespie, Parker , Navarro and Dameron have endured because of the quality of their music yet hearing the likes of Eager rip through a head that is clearly derived from "Sweet Georgia Brown" is no longer as interesting as it might have been seventy years ago. At it's worst, the whole bebop movement generated a "around the block" mentality of playing the changes and you can understand why the likes of Mingus quickly became frustrated with this approach and sought a more compositional solution in the early 1950s. At it's best, the whole be-bop movement was potent enough to actually colour the way most people perceive the music and jazz musicians which still has some resonance today and this does not exclude the proliferation of drugs. To quote Charles Dickens, it was the best of times and the worst of times.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Brew Moore was also one of the genuine "beats" before Kerouac and referenced by him in "Desolation Angels". Brew went on an early road trip from New York to San Francisco picking up Jack Elliot and Woody Guthrie along the way. Apparently Guthrie really hated jazz and when Brew Moore sat in at some bar along the way, WG refused to directly speak to him for the rest of the trip. Moore said, "As Woody and I were both the only real drinkers, he had to ask through Jack Elliot if I'd go shares on a gallon of wine with him!"

BN.

[Serial_Apologist]

"Cool n' crazy" still sounds terrific even if some of Roger's recordings seem to sit oddly with the concept of "modern jazz" insofar that you can now appreciate just how influential Basie's original band was upon his work . (There is even a Basie tribute album by Rogers.)

Having experienced my boptism of fire [sic] with obtaining Dizzy's "The greatest of Dizzy Gillepie" recording that included such astonishing numbers as "Manteca", "Cubana Be" and "Cubana Bop", my experience with the late 50s band that introduced Freddie Hubbard, courtesy Diz, was that post the great Massey Hall recording, the split up of the original bop circle with Diz taking a more Latin direction, and Monk and Miles going off in their directions, (leaving aside Mingus and the Tristano and West Coast schools) big band writing with few exceptions returned to the Basie model, albeit modified by such as Quincy Jones's arrangings - this being the cause of me giving that particular LP away in disapointment.

There was, until comparatively recently, a very good trumpet regular on the S London pub scene whom I asked one day, was Shorty Rogers his favourite player, to which he replied affirmatively, with the strongest emphasis. I don't at present remember his name, and presume he must have passed on, one of the great forgottens.

The whole "running the changes" aspect of Bop almost ensured that lesser players have gone by the wayside but I think your comments mask a far wider problem insofar that younger audiences have almost entirely rejected the "bop model" of playing jazz and rock / popular influences are probably far more prescient. Rea most liner notes and younger players are more likely to cite being influenced by popular culture than Charlie Parker whose music is probably little more relevant as in influence as Louis Armstrong [...] I really love this era of jazz but I do think that there is a strong risk of diminishing returns when you delve in to this area. The likes of Gillespie, Parker , Navarro and Dameron have endured because of the quality of their music yet hearing the likes of Eager rip through a head that is clearly derived from "Sweet Georgia Brown" is no longer as interesting as it might have been seventy years ago. At it's worst, the whole bebop movement generated a "around the block" mentality of playing the changes and you can understand why the likes of Mingus quickly became frustrated with this approach and sought a more compositional solution in the early 1950s.

What, it seems to me, has however come back from the bop era is the ways in which todays younger musicians tend to think chromatically in their improvising methodologies, as opposed to the modal way of thinking that came in 60-odd years ago with Miles and 'Trane. I would place Steve Coleman at the outset of this return, having first noticed him in Dave Holland's band in the mid-1980s. It almost seems as if that amount of time had to elapse before jazz improvisation could once again resume the lineage left unfinished with Parker's death - as though Parker had "used up" the possibilities afforded by improvising on chromatic extensions of diatonically-based chords, as he himself implied in speaking as he had about wanting to study with a modern classical composer - Hindemith and Varèse are usually referred to in this connection - in order to re-invigorate his own creativity.

[Ian Thumwood]

I strongly agree with that last statement. The issue , I feel, lies a lot within the idea of turning the use of Modal improvisation based on scales to the intervallic stuff where other triads ( and key signatures) can be implied from the various scales - modal or not. There is also a lot of re-harmonisation based on replacing the roots with various other chords but I think that using triads has more mathematical possibilities that creating scales. Today's players have increasingly been aware of the harmonic possibilities and , whilst I concur that steve Coleman is a huge influence, I would suggest that the harmonic language of players like Mike Brecker or Pat Metheny are far more sophisticated than what went on in the late 50's.

It is fascinating to see how the likes of Eager would have seemed the height of sophistication when this was recorded but you can see why be-bop quickly moved on. This is just yet another re-working of "Sweet Georgia Brown" and sums up for me the problem that, although the music swings , bebop quickly became clichéd. This track is indicative of why the box set probably is a step too far for me even though a good deal of the music does appeal. The unison playing with lack of arrangements and the often jaded use of contrafacts probably explains why so many musicians turn to drugs! I just bet the impression that , in this era, the soloists led the way yet the people writing the music were the ones who built the bedrock for future generations. It is small wonder that composers like Ellington, Monk, Dameron, etc were all held in high esteem because a good proportion of players were not composing to the same level that nearly every jazz musician is these days. If you like, the Eager track is a bit naïve. It hasn't really stood the test of time even though it is enjoyable enough. A 10-cd box set of this stuff would be hard work, I think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUDJ8FlQP0M

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

" I would suggest that the harmonic language of players like Mike Brecker or Pat Metheny are far more sophisticated than what went on in the late 50's..."

Yes, but at the risk of being "vulger-jazzist", who gives a fuck if it doesn't connect emotionally and artistically? Are Bechet's records to be discarded or sneered at from high because he's not quite up there " harmonically" with the 2017 wonderkind, the 2016 being passé already, in the death of history school. Do people really listen to Parker and think, if only he'd been a bit more well, "sophisticated". This way lies madness and defeats the entire object of what " art", any art, in any form, is about.
Time I departed from this monastery and its "canting priests".

BN.

[Serial_Apologist]

" I would suggest that the harmonic language of players like Mike Brecker or Pat Metheny are far more sophisticated than what went on in the late 50's..."

Yes, but at the risk of being "vulger-jazzist", who gives a fuck if it doesn't connect emotionally and artistically? Are Bechet's records to be discarded or sneered at from high because he's not quite up there " harmonically" with the 2017 wonderkind, the 2016 being passé already, in the death of history school. Do people really listen to Parker and think, if only he'd been a bit more well, "sophisticated". This way lies madness and defeats the entire object of what " art", any art, in any form, is about.
Time I departed from this monastery and its "canting priests".

BN.

The best of any era's art reflects and refracts that era - it was as bad or as good as it got at that time, and it's why we can feel able to some extent to identify with the feelings expressed by Bechet, Beethoven or Bach, feeling that the modes of expression served what they were intended to express in acordance with what some call the spirit of the time, development of the means of production (including instrumental technology) and the associated potential for those developments to uncover new areas of expression by means of new techniques, whuile manifesting many of the same old same existential olds. When the evolution of the means of expression slows or stops it tends to go backwards, a sign that civilisation might also be.